The delivery of media services to residential environments, via cable, optical or satellite networks, continues to expand. As the number of households availing themselves of these services grows, it can place an increased burden upon the service providers human resources, and in particular upon the technicians available to be dispatched for residential locations to perform premises equipment installation and service. Consequently, it has been advantageous for service providers to supply their subscribing customers with premises equipment that can be installed with little or no assistance form service provider technicians. This do-it-yourself installation is primarily a matter of designing and providing equipment that has a minimal number of ports, connectors, buttons and selectors that a given subscriber would need to concern themselves with during installation, and ensuring that the equipment autonomously performs as many of the processes required for installation as possible.
The provision of premises equipment capable of performing autonomous or semi-autonomous installation processes can become problematic if the installation environment is not homogenous. If the network and/or the pre-existing premises equipment constituting the installation environment varies from one residential site to another, it can become very difficult to address such variations in a cost-effective manner with a single, premises equipment design and still avoid the need for a technician's assistance, with some of the most troublesome being the consequence of efforts by a service provider to upgrade or modernize a network. As a given upgrade is rolled out across a service environment, it will be almost unavoidable to have some residences with one type of hardware (the older premises equipment) and others with a different type (the upgraded hardware).
Consequently, it would be advantageous to provide for an equipment interface that could adaptively mate with a variety of premises equipment types or versions. The interface would provide and accept data streams conforming to the particular protocol(s) utilized by the particular premises equipment with which it was mated. For example, data protocols such as Universal Serial Bus (“USB”) 2.0, USB 3.0, and Serial AT Attachment (“SATA”). Ideally, this adaptation would be performed independent of any user action or intervention outside of connecting the adaptive interface upon the new equipment to the pre-existing installation environment.
A system and method for automatically adapting the data protocol employed by a storage device to communicate with a mated Home Media System (HMS). The system and method utilize particular protocol conversions and data path switching in response to the detection of the particular protocol employed by the HMS. The technology enables a single type of storage device to be mated with a variety of HMSs, and autonomously adapt so as to establish and facilitate streaming data communications with the particular mated HMS. This enables a single storage device design to be utilized throughout a network of dissimilar HMSs.
The aspects, and advantages of the present invention will become better understood with regard to the following description, appended claims, and accompanying drawings in which:
As shown, storage device 102 comprises hard disc drive 108, which is connected to SATA Data Switch 110 by SATA bus 112. SATA Data Switch 110 is linked to USB-SATA bridge 114 by SATA bus 116. USB-SATA bridge 112 converts data between SATA protocol and USB 2 and USB 3 protocols (bus 118 and bus 120, respectively), thereby providing a link between the USB busses (118, 120) and SATA bus 112. High-Speed Data switch 122 serves to route data between High-Speed Data bus 124 (which can support data conforming to either the SATA or USB 3 protocols) and both SATA Data Switch 110 and USB-SATA Data Bridge 114. SATA data is routed via bus SATA data bus 124, and USB 3 data is routed USB 3 bus 120.
Controller 128 automatically detects the type of data connections supported by HMS 104 via interface 106 and generates appropriate instructions for SATA Data Switch 110, USB-SATA Data Bridge 114 and High-Speed Data Switch 122 so as to convert and route data accordingly between HDD 108 and HMS 104, without any user input or intervention.
An alternate mode of operation is illustrated in
Yet another mode of operation of system 100 is illustrated in
If steps 402 and 404 of
If in any of the above examples, a viable USB or SATA connection between storage device interface (116) and an HMS is recognized then appropriate protocol “handshake” or initiation sequence between the interface and the mated HMS is completed. Such handshakes/sequences are defined within each of the protocols and are well-known in the art. The recognition of the availability of a particular type of protocol connection could also be accomplished by a means unrelated to the particular protocols, such as the establishment of a connection to a particular contact or contacts upon the HMS, provided for the express purpose of identifying a particular data protocol. The invention is not limited by the particular system or method employed to recognize a given HMS protocol. Nor is it limited by the particular components utilized to convert data streams from one protocol to another, or provide switchable paths between a storage media, such as an HDD, and a device interface. Such switching could be enabled by any suitable switching fabric that could be appropriately controlled by a processor or other means as a function of the particular protocol connection supported by a mated HMS.
Although the invention herein has been described with reference to particular embodiments, it is to be understood that these embodiments are merely illustrative of the principles and applications of the present invention. For example, the storage device was described as being an HDD in the above embodiments, but it could also be a solid-state drive storage device, a removeable disk or disk drive, a remote storage device accessible via a network (public, private, wired, wireless, the Internet, etc.). In addition, various functional aspects of the invention could be implemented via physical arrangements that might have varying degrees of integration. The entirety of the disclosed invention could be implemented within a monolithic system, or disparate discrete components without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention as defined by the appended claims.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind |
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PCT/US21/56475 | 10/25/2021 | WO |
Number | Date | Country | |
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63124680 | Dec 2020 | US |